Cooking appliances generally define one or more enclosures supporting one or more heating elements. For instance, oven appliances can include a cabinet defining an insulated cooking chamber therein for receipt of food items for cooking. A cooktop having heating elements may be positioned at a top portion of the cabinet for, e.g., grilling, boiling or frying food items thereon. Other heating elements, such as a bake heating element and/or broil heating element may be positioned within the cooking chamber to provide heat to food items located therein. The bake heating element is positioned at a bottom of the cooking chamber. The broil heating element positioned at a top of the cooking chamber. One or more electronic components may be housed within cabinet outside of cooking chamber. During operation of the various heating elements, portions of the cabinet, such as the areas adjacent to cooking chamber and/or cooktop, may be indirectly heated.
Portions of the cabinet, such as those housing electronic components, are preferably maintained below one or more threshold temperatures during operation of the oven range appliance. Certain oven range appliances include a duct system that draws or pulls air into the cabinet for cooling an outer surface of the cabinet during operation. Specifically, certain oven range appliances define a cooling channel between, e.g., the cooking chamber and a top panel of the cabinet. Air may flow into the cooling chamber and about the cooking chamber to maintain a surface of, e.g., the top panel of the cabinet below a desired temperature threshold.
In at least some of these oven range appliances, airflow through the cooling channel tends to rise vertically to a top end of the oven range appliance. In turn, heated air about certain portions of the oven range appliance may stagnate. For instance, heated air passing across or through a door of the oven range appliance may stagnate between the door, the cabinet, and a control panel. As another example, heated air between the cooktop and an upper wall of the cooking chamber may stagnate, especially at lateral extremes of the oven range appliance. If the heated air stagnates for too long or reaches too high of a temperature, undesirable conditions may arise. In some cases, damage may be caused to one or more portion of the appliance.
Therefore, a cooking appliance providing for more uniform cooling may be desirable. In particular, a cooking appliance providing one or more features for cooling air proximate the control panel and/or a top portion of the appliance would be beneficial. More particularly, a device for providing more uniform cooling of the surface of the side panel by more evenly distributing a cooling airflow through the cooling channel would be particularly beneficial.